Young Writers Society

This topic was inspired by @StellaThomas' How to write good male characters, which includes some really helpful information that you should check out if you haven't already!

Despite being female myself, I've always displayed less feminine traits and have leaned towards what are considered typically masculine traits. Because of this, I have a lack of characters who are overtly feminine. Though I don't need information on how to write feminine characters for any of my current writing projects, I thought this would be some good information to have for the future. How do you go about writing feminine characters, and what traits would you give a feminine character?

Thank you in advance! ♡

Well, I have no idea. My situation is similar to yours, @Mage. @Marth suggested to me when discussing my novel-in-progress, Shadowsong (link below if you are interested) that finding places to insert character description in is good (I am writing first-person). Describing her voice, movement, dress, etc. to portray femininity. Other than that I am not really helpful at all, but I will be stalking this thread...

Link: Shadowsong: Prologue

I write a lot of feminine characters, and consider myself strongly feminine, because as I always say, feminine does not equal bad, and feminine does not equal weak.

When switching from a male to female PoV I try to make these changes (rather, I make them in reverse, for I find writing male characters more difficult):

- use more colour description
- describe what people are wearing in more detail
- have a protagonist more in tune with her own emotions (blame the patriarchy)
- have a protagonist with more skill to interpret other people's emotions
- have a protagonist who is a lot less sure of themselves (this isn't universal. But male protagonists, to me, are always more self-assured. Blame the patriarchy).
- have my protagonist and her female friends giggle
- a higher propensity to enjoy gossip and scandal (not necessarily in a malicious way)
- more likely to be passive-aggressive than aggressive-aggressive in conflict scenarios (depends more on the characters)
- more likely to cry
- less likely to shout
- more affectionate and uses more physical contact in general - e.g. helping friends zip up dresses, helping with their hair, sleeping in the same bed (this is all stuff girls do all the time that I don't think really have equivalents - boys will share a bed when they have to, but not just because they wanted to keep chatting etc).

With regards physical description, yes, but I don't think that that's really going to help the situation much. Like, if you start saying "in her high voice" and "she brushed her long hair out of her eyes" it's going to get a bit tired a bit quickly if that's all you're doing to prove your character is feminine.